By Iain Blair
While many creatives here in Hollywood are still dealing with the ongoing fallout from the strikes and COVID, for the most part the nuts-and-bolts side of production has been ramping up their operations in anticipation of a busy 2025 and a brighter future. Case in point? The new 300,000-square-foot Sylmar Studios opens for business this month, with six large purpose-built sound stages equipped with catwalks and perms to support world-class productions. Each stage features adjoining elephant doors and direct access to production support space. Located in the L.A. suburbs and just 30 miles from downtown, the facility also includes an on-site grip and lighting rental department which debuted last year. Sylmar Studios Set Lighting and Grip department provides clients with the latest in lighting technology along with legacy favourites, and stocks such top manufacturers as Astera, Aputure, ARRI, Cineo, Litegear, Chimera and Matthews.
The department has already serviced NBC/Universal and such shows as The Lincoln Lawyer, 911, Bosch, Master Chef, Not Dead Yet and Ted. The independent production facility is being overseen by president/general manager Patrick Dempsey, a studio veteran whose credits include stints at Fox, The Culver Studios, Sony and DreamWorks SKG.
Sunbelt Rentals Film & TV Canada is also looking ahead to increasing production and has invested in sustainability with the purchase of two new electric camera cars for their Motion Equipment fleet – the Cinergy Car and eScorpion. The latter has been rented out since Sunbelt received it. Sunbelt Rentals also supplied gear to the Vancouver Canucks Call of Destiny video, including a large quantity of Skypanels, lighting and grip package, a camera crane with remote head, and location equipment for the Rogers Arena, Vancouver, shoot.
Credit: George Malczynksi
“We have supported the Canucks with their intro video for 4 of the last 5 years, including this year,” reports Kaylee Leitch, senior marketing specialist. “The intro video features the Canucks star players and plays during the intro of every home game on the jumbotron at Rogers Arena for all the Canucks fans to see.” Sunbelt Rentals also supported seven productions that were showcased in the recent Whistler Film Festival, including Lucky Strikes (shot in Winnipeg – Camera), Sweet Baby Angel (Halifax – Camera, Lighting and Grip was a partial supply), Aberdeen (Winnipeg/Vancouver – Camera, Lighting and Grip, Motion Equipment). Hunting Matthew Nichols (Vancouver – Camera, Lighting and Grip), The Birds Who Fear Death (Calgary – Camera, Lighting and Grip), Really Happy Someday (Toronto – Camera, Lighting and Grip), and Krypto (Vancouver – Lighting and Grip, Motion Equipment, Location Equipment).
Credit: George Malczynksi
I’ve talked with many DPs who, along with rental houses and productions, are welcoming the new ARRI Alexa 265, a new-generation 65 mm camera created in response to feedback from users of the famed Alexa 65, its predecessor. Alexa 265 combines a small form factor with a revised 65 mm sensor, delivering higher image quality through 15 stops of dynamic range and enhanced low-light performance. Featuring the same LogC4 workflow, Reveal Color Science, and accessories as ARRI’s state-of-the-art Alexa 35, plus a new filter system, Alexa 265 makes 65 mm as easy to use as any other form. The Alexa 265 camera body is based on the compact Alexa 35 and despite containing a sensor three times as large, is only 4 mm longer and 11 mm wider. Using this body design means Alexa 265 is less than one-third the Alexa 65’s weight and it takes advantage of ARRI’s latest cooling and power management technologies. The camera’s small size and weight allow it to be used in ways never imagined for 65 mm—from drones and stabilisers to the most space-constrained locations—and it’s faster to work with on set. Boot-up time and power draw have been improved, and compatibility with the Alexa 35 accessory set opens vastly more rigging options. Feedback from Alexa 65 users over the last decade made the dramatic reduction in form factor a design priority for Alexa 265, but also determined the approach to image quality. Filmmakers wanted to retain the 6.5K resolution and large pixel pitch but were interested in higher dynamic range and improved low-light performance. A brand-new and comprehensive revision of the 65 mm sensor was therefore developed for Alexa 265, increasing the dynamic range from 14 to 15 stops and the sensitivity from 3200 to 6400 EI (ISO/ASA), with crisper blacks, greater contrast, and a lower noise floor. Alexa 265 will be available to productions from early 2025.
ARRI rentals also played a key role in the production of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Netflix’s new series and acclaimed adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s epic novel. Directed by Argentinian filmmaker Alex García López and Colombian filmmaker Laura Mora, it was shot entirely in Colombia, and cinematographers Paulo Pérez and María Sarasvati shot on Alexa Mini LF cameras and Cooke SF Anamorphic Full Frame lenses, creating imagery that is dreamlike and organic, in harmony with the novel’s themes of love, loss, and the unexplainable. The film embraces the essence of Marquez’s magic realism, grounding fantastical elements in the mundane aspects of daily life.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
I was chatting recently with legendary cinematographer Phedon Papamichael ASC GSC whose long list of impressive credits includes such diverse films as Sideways, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Ford v Ferrari, The Descendants, Identity, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma and Knight and Day. His latest film is A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold (it marks their seventh collaboration), which stars Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan, and which is already getting a lot of awards attention. The twice Oscar nominated DP (for The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Nebraska) shot with the Sony Venice 2, at 8.6K, “with the full sensor so I had a very clean image, even at very high sensitivities. And I knew we were going to add grain, as typically we emulate film.” While he’s “very happy” with the way the film turned out, the veteran also voices concerns about the industry. “I don’t want to sound like an old, disillusioned cinematographer, but I’m worried about the future of filmmaking and storytelling,” he says. “I made a career out of making medium budget adult dramas that were character driven, like this film, and those films are definitely becoming rarer and rarer. Now, more and more, it’s the mega-budget superhero movies and that universe. But I love to tell smaller stories, which they still do in Europe, and occasionally I try and seek those out because they’re good for my soul. But those are becoming very rare, and they’re becoming just streaming productions, whether it’s Netflix or Apple, and I’m not saying good work isn’t done on those. But I got into this business because I wanted to shoot for a cinema. I wanted to shoot for the big screen. I was affected as a child by going to movies. So, something like this film is a highlight in a way, because it reinstates my hope and belief that a good movie, even on this small budget level, will maybe make people realize that there’s still an audience for it. There are still people who are wanting to experience films this way. I don’t want to just draw this doom scenario for the film industry. There are a lot of great young filmmakers. I know people are writing good stories. It’s just convincing the people who finance that there is an audience for those. So whenever there’s a year where some of these so-called smaller auteur films become very successful, also financially successful, that might steer the studios to reevaluate some of the ways the business has developed over the last decade.”
A Complete Unknown
Director of Photography Eric Steelberg and director Jason Reitman have had an even long collaboration than Papamichael and Mangold. “I’ve been working with Eric since college,” Reitman, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose credits include Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, told me. Their new film, Saturday Night, is an homage to Saturday Night Live, arguably the single most influential American comedy program of the past half-century, but it’s also a nail-biting thriller about the iconic show that almost never made it to prime time. To capture the period, the team decided to shoot 16mm. “This is the first time we’ve shot 16mm since our first short film,” says Reitman. “We wanted something that breathes like film. We wanted it to feel as though you were watching a movie, a document from 1975. And it was thrilling to be back in that workspace, to be working with these smaller cameras that gave us a lot of dexterity as we moved through hallways, through doorways, following character after character.” Steelberg knew that the film’s visual look needed to capture the frenetic energy of the script, so he and Reitman used a series of long takes to create the illusion that the entire film was one continuous shot. “There were times when we did these very intricate dolly moves, choreographed with what the actors were doing,” Steelberg says. “And there were other times when we just threw the camera on an operator’s shoulder and reacted to what was happening, almost like a documentary. And those things juxtaposed with each other is kind of the style the movie developed into.”
Header Photo: Credit: George Malczynksi
